Bengal

Bengal is a region of present-day India and Bangladesh, encompassing the Indian state of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh. Its capital was Calcutta.

History
The region of Bengal was located in the easternmost portions of the Indian Subcontinent, comprising parts of present-day India and all of Bangladesh. The region consisted of several rice plantations in the early modern era, and it was once a part of the mighty and wealthy Mughal Empire. However, it was eventually annexed into the Maratha Confederacy, whose rule upgraded the region to prosperity. In 1729, there were 30,720,600 people in the region: 66.4% were Hindu, 20% Buddhist, and 13.7% Muslim. With its capital at Calcutta (now in India), the region expanded and in the 1730s the present-day Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka (then Dacca) was settled as a craft workshops.

Since 1947, Bengal was politically divided: first between India and Pakistan's East Pakistan exclave, and then between India and Bangladesh when the latter separated from Pakistan. The region of Bengal's largest cities today are Dhaka (Dacca), Calcutta, and Chittagong - Calcutta is part of India, and the other two cities are parts of Bangladesh.